Can you spell WASTE boys and girls?

A very alert Dopester has clued me into this story which escaped my notice.

The [Illinois] Corrections Department plans to spend nearly $450,000 for an accounting firm to determine whether state prisons are operating efficiently, although its own staff has conducted two similar studies in the past two years.

But the union representing prison guards complained Wednesday that prisons are dangerously understaffed and the money should be spent to hire more security staff.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees also questioned the qualifications of the firm, which has never reviewed a statewide prison system. An executive for Harvey M. Rose Accountancy Corp. said the company could handle the work.

The $443,975 contract has not yet been signed, Short said, but it is outlined in an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press. The study should start this summer and finish by year's end, Short said.

The review comes even as the General Assembly last week slashed the Corrections Department's budget by $88 million, or 6.4 percent. The agency's employee headcount, according to state records, has plummeted 13 percent, from 16,104 in August 2002 to 14,020 in April, while the inmate population has grown by more than 1,100 in the same period. (emphasis mine)

A Corrections executive said last summer that if Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration had not put a hold on new hires, the agency would add security guards.

"I don't know that it's necessary to spend nearly half a million dollars to be informed of conditions that any correctional officer could tell you they face," said [AFSCME] union spokesman Anders Lindall.

This is where our money is going, when Blago and the Dems have agreed to raid teacher and state employee pension funds just to keep the state solvent? Outrageous.